Jesus' Care for Believers in Adversity
Revelation 3:8: “…I know that
you have but little power/strength, and yet you have kept my word and have not
denied my name.” Then word there for
strength is the Greek noun DUNAMIS [dunamij]
which means power. There are some whom you may hear or read who say that they
were weak spiritually, that they did not have a spiritual power, but that is
not what this is saying here. It is not a mention of spiritual power or
spiritual strength because the strength that we have in our spiritual life is
based on the eternal omnipotence of God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. It
doesn’t come out in small increments. We have passages such as 1 Corinthians
1:24: “but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power
of God and the wisdom of God.” There is no just a little bit of power in Christ,
it is all or nothing, an absolute concept. 1 Corinthians 1:18: “For the message
about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are
being saved it is the power of God.” Romans 1:4: “and was declared to be Son of
God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the
dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.” The point here is that when DUNAMIS relates to
spiritual power and strength it is an absolute reality. When we are walking by
means of the Spirit we have the supernatural power from God the Holy Spirit to
live the Christian life. It is not a little bit, not a fraction, it is an all
or nothing concept. So when the Lord Jesus Christ evaluates the church at
The third element there in
verse 8 is that they did not deny His name. Even under persecution they did not
deny Christ. The interesting thing is that when we get to the verb here for
denied it is in the aorist tense, a simple past tense. So it indicates
something that had actually happened in the remote past in contrast to the fact
that when Jesus said earlier that “you have kept my word,” it is a present
tense. So the contrast is that “you have and are keeping my word but you did
not in the past deny my name.” This indicates that they had gone through some
specific historical incident of persecution and had passed the test with flying
colors. They continued to be obedient but in that
instance when they had the opportunity to deny Christ’s name they did not do so.
Revelation 3:9, the source of
that persecution is indicated: “I will make those of the synagogue of Satan who
say that they are Jews and are not, but are lying—I will make them come and bow
down before your feet, and they will learn that I have loved you.” This is a
fascinating verse for a number of reasons, but ultimately what we take from
this in terms of application is going to be the reality that whatever we go
through in life, no matter what the difficulty, persecution, adversity, heartache,
…
The synagogue of Satan: Cf.
Revelation 2:9, to the church at
“I will make” is a poor
translation in the NKJV and the NIV. The NASB translates, “Behold, I will cause.” The verb is DIDOMI [didomi] which means to give or to grant something. It
usually indicates a gracious gift whenever God the Father or Jesus Christ is
the subject of the verb, which is what we have here. It should be “I will give.”
They lie because they have never trusted Christ as their savior.
Then the next clause: “Indeed” IDOU [i)dou], which means “behold.” “I will make them,” and here
there is a verb shift. It is not DIDOMI, it is POIEO [poiew].
Many translators try to make them the same because there is a similarity here
in terms of idiom. But Jesus Christ is going to provide something—POIEO means to
do or to make. The DIDOMI was a present tense verb, probably a futuristic use
of the present. Sometimes a future tense is viewed with a future nuance, and
that indicates that something is happening in the present or is spoken of as a
reality in the present, even though its fulfilment is in the future—but it is
in the immediate future. A future tense verb would indicate something more in
the distant future. “Indeed, I will make them come and worship.” This isn’t
something that Jesus is forcing them to do, this is not the sense of POIEO here, it indicates something that He will bring about in history.
They will “come and worship before your feet.” There are two different ways in
which people look at this particular verse. One is in the far distant future,
that when Jesus Christ returns at the second coming every knee will bow and
every tongue will confess Jesus Christ as Lord. All demons, all unbelievers,
will do homage to Jesus as the redeemer and as the sovereign King, even though
they are not believers. The will be forced to recognize who he is and that is a
far distant application of this verse. What happened here is something
historical in the situation in
“…and they will learn that I
have loved you.” This must be understood to be something that happened
historically at that time.
Revelation 3:10: “Because you
have kept my command to persevere, I will keep you from the hour of trial that
is coming on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth.” In the
English Bible it will be noted that there is a period at the end of verse 9, as
if it ends with the simple statement, “I will make them come and worship before
your feet, and they will learn that I have loved you.” Then verse 10 begins
with a capital B in “because,” indicating a new sentence. This is important
because the main clause of verse 10 is “I will keep you from the hour of trial
that is coming on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth.” We
have to understand something here. There is this word translated “because,”
which is HOTI [o(ti]. It can mean
because or for, both of which have a similar meaning. Or it can have a thir`d
meaning, “that.” There are two ways in which the relationship of verse 9 to
verse 10 can be understood. The way it has been traditionally translated is
that verse 9 ends with a period and verse 10 begins with a new sentence, “Because
you have kept my command to persevere.” Here is the problem: a) Translators of
the KJV had a tendency to make every verse autonomous, an independent
sentence, even if it was a long sentence in the Greek. b) In the Greek there is
no punctuation. In fact they don’t even have a space between words, or
hyphenation. The only way we can tell where a sentence would break is on the
basis of syntactical features.
This is the option. One of
the principles that we see is when “Because” is at the beginning of a sentence
it modifies or gives the cause or reason for the main clause. That would
indicate in verse 10 that “I [Jesus] will keep you from the hour of trial
because you kept my command to persevere.” We will see that the hour of testing
is the Tribulation, so that would seem to indicate perhaps partial raptures. The
alternate punctuation would be: “I will make them come and bow down before your
feet, and they will learn that I have loved you, because you have kept my command
to persevere…” Here we see that in light of their persecution and their
perseverance and obedience to Christ, no matter how tough things got, now He is
going to, in turn, bless them by changing the persecution situation and
eventually many of these Jews would come to know Christ as their savior. This would mean that the statement in verse 10, “I
will keep you from the hour of trial,” begins a totally new thought. This is
supported in the usage of the grammar.
First principle: When “because”
begins the sentence it states the cause of the following clause. That is a
little awkward, it is called the suspensive use.
Second principle: When “because”
follows a comma, as it would if we placed a comma at the end of verse 9, it
links to the previous clause. That makes more sense.
The least common use of “because”
begins the sentence. It is very rare for “because” to begin a sentence. Out of
about 450 uses of the causal HOTI grammarians recognize only twelve as suspensive. Furthermore,
the apostle John uses HOTI in the causal sense about 180 times, and only 11 of
those is suspensive. So the indication is that the
normal way in which John would use this word would be at the conclusion of a
sentence, not to begin the next sentence. Then we come in an look at how it is
used and look at the context, and then bring in comparison with doctrine and
other things, as we realize that this phrase, “because you have kept my command
to persevere,” links to verse 9 and is the reason why Jesus Christ is going to
work in their situations because they have been faithful and have endured in
the testing. He is going to alleviate that particular testing and there will be
a change take place in the hearts of these unbelieving Jews, and many of them
will reverse course, trust Christ as their Messiah, and this will relax the
source of adversity.
The Lord does the same thing for us. He doesn’t necessarily keep us under the same test for a long time. Some of us may question that. If it is a medical test or a family test it may go on for years, if not decades. But what we know from this is that the Lord is not unaware. He is always aware of what we are going through.